Exploring Nature in New Hampshire

Things I’ve Seen

Spring is happening, but ever so slowly this year. April showers have come along right on schedule and though they’ll take care of the remaining snow they’ll also enhance mud season, which has already been a bear. The ground froze deeply this year and the deeper the freeze the worse the mud. None of this has anything to do with the above photo of juniper berries but I love their color and I was surprised that the birds hadn’t eaten them yet.

From a distance I saw what looked like a patch of small yellow flowers. I couldn’t even guess what yellow flowers besides maybe coltsfoot or dandelions, would be blooming in March.

But they weren’t flowers at all. They were the fruit of horse nettle plants, hundreds of them. Carolina horse nettle (Solanum carolinense) isn’t a true nettle but instead is in the nightshade family, along with tomatoes and potatoes and many toxic plants. This plant is also toxic, enough so to be named devil’s tomato. It contains alkaloids that can make you very sick and which have caused death. There are also spines on the leaves which can break off and embed themselves in the skin. Skunks, pheasant, and turkeys are said to eat the fruit but it didn’t look to me like a single one had been touched. Nothing seems to eat the stems or foliage.

I saw these pretty buds on a small ornamental tree in a local park. It had a weeping habit and couldn’t have been more than six feet tall with many weeping branches. I thought it might be some type of elm but elm buds are flattened, not round, so in the end I’m not sure what they were.

This shows what happens when a sap spigot, actually called a spile, isn’t removed from the tree after sap season. The tree has almost grown completely over this one and has squeezed what should be round into a teardrop shape. The crushing power of the wood must be incredible.

This photo that appeared in a previous blog post shows what a spile looks like when the tree hasn’t grown over it. Things like this inside trees are a woodcutter’s nightmare. Spiles started out as simple wooden pegs which were hammered into a hole in the tree to direct the sap into the buckets which were hung from them but these days they are made from galvanized steel.

I found this mullein plant (Verbascum thapsus) growing up through the pavement in an old abandoned parking area. It’s in the process of shedding its large old, outer leaves from last year to make room for the its new leaves. This plant stays green all winter long under the snow and starts growing quickly in spring as soon as it melts. Another name for this plant is flannel leaf because of its large soft, fuzzy leaves. Pliny the elder of ancient Rome used the warmed leaves as poultices for arthritis and Roman legionnaires dipped the long stalks in tallow and used them as torches. The plant is originally from Europe and is considered invasive.

I see this plant in a flower bed every time I go looking for spring bulbs blooming at the local college, but I’ve never seen it bloom. I think it’s a hollyhock but I’m not sure, whatever it is it’s very tough and stays green all winter long. I like the pebbly texture of its leaves.

I’ve written about Edgewood Forest in past posts. It lies near the Keene airport and there always seems to be a controversy boiling over the trees there. The Federal Aviation Administration says the trees are tall enough to pose a hazard to planes, but the original documents that deeded the land to the city says that the land should be left as is, with no cutting of trees. What this has amounted to is trees being cut all around the deeded parcel called Edgewood Forest, leaving it a kind of forested island. The place shown in the above photo was forested until not too long ago but then all the trees were cut, all the stumps pulled and this-whatever it is- was built. Picnic tables were placed here and there. Apparently the higher powers thought that people would flock there and love it enough to even want to picnic there, but I’ve been by it hundreds of times and have never seen a soul there, picnicking or otherwise. Since there are hundreds of trees that are taller very nearby this seems like a total waste of effort and money to me.

This kind of thing is happening all over and town governments can’t seem to get the fact that people go to these places to enjoy nature. They stand and scratch their heads, wondering why the people don’t still flock to the same places after they’ve been “improved” like this one. Instead of attracting people they are driving them away, and I’m sure the income from tourist dollars is going to start reflecting that, if it hasn’t already. Meanwhile we’ll have monuments like this one to shake our heads at as we pass by in search of places that are more open and welcoming to nature lovers.

Goldthread (Coptis trifolia) is one of the plants that grew in that forest before it was turned into a lawn. Luckily I know where there are more of them. Native Americans showed the early settlers how to use goldthread to relieve the pain of canker sores and it became an extremely popular medicine. At one point in the 1800s more of it was sold on the docks of Boston than any other plant and that meant that it was severely over collected. Now, 200 years or so later It has made a good comeback and it will always be with us if we stop turning forests into lawns. It gets its common name from its bright yellow, thread like roots. It will bloom in late April with a pretty little white flower. I love its leaves, which look like they were hammered out of sheet metal.

When a sunbeam picks out something specific in nature I usually pay close attention, thinking that maybe I’m supposed to see that thing for whatever reason. On this day a sunbeam picked out this beech leaf, which was perfect and unblemished. It was a beautiful thing, as the things picked out by sunbeams almost always are. A sunbeam showed me how incredibly beautiful a red clover blossom was once and completely changed my opinion of what I always considered an ugly, unwanted weed.

A sunbeam also fell on this single turkey tail fungus (Trametes versicolor) and its dominant blue color just happened to be my favorite. Turkey tails can vary greatly in color and I think I’ve seen them wearing just about every shade this year.

I’m hoping this is the last of this winter’s ice I’ll have to show here. Both day and nighttime temperatures are rising and ever so slowly the white is disappearing.

If you’ve never looked through a knothole this photo is for you. Knotholes like these happen when branches die and their wood shrinks faster than the surrounding wood of the tree. Eventually they fall off the tree, leaving a hole behind. The part of the tree that protrudes and surrounds the branch is called the branch collar and it should always be left intact when pruning. As can be seen, the tree leaves it behind naturally.

Other “improvements” I’ve seen lately involved cutting all the alders and other native shrubs from the banks of a small local pond, but since this pond is used as a water source in case of fire I can understand the thinking behind wanting to keep the brush cut back. I thought this stump, cause by two young alders growing together, looked like the face of an owl.

I had the face of this barred owl to compare the stump to. A few years ago I met a barred owl sitting in the middle of a trail. It just sat there, staring directly into my eyes while I walked to within 5 feet of it. I stood for several minutes, feeling as if I was being drawn into those big brown eyes that were much like my own, until I finally turned and left. The last time I saw that owl it still sat on the ground, which is a very odd thing for an owl to be doing. It was a strange experience and seeing this owl reminded me of it. This owl was much bigger than that one but sat quietly in the same way, letting me take as many photos as I wanted. The photos would have been much better had it been a sunny day but you can’t have everything, and being able to look into the eyes of an owl should be enough.

If you’d like to see what it’s like to stare into the eyes of an owl, look at the beautiful photo of a saw-whet owl that Montucky recently posted on his blog. You can see it by clicking on the word HERE. Its eyes are yellow instead of brown like a barred owl, but the effect is the same.

Just a note: This post is the first I’ve done on my new computer and I’m having trouble getting photos to look right on the new monitor, so if things look a little stranger than usual that might be why. It’s a nice big monitor that’s easy to see but it’s also very bright so photos look like they were overexposed. I hope you’ll bear with me.

I am grateful for the magic, mystery and majesty of nature – my loyal friend and companion – always there, welcoming and waiting for me to come; to be healed. ~Tom North

27 Responses

SO glad I popped in to your blog today – what lucky timing for me! That horse nettle may be the mystery plant I’m pulling out of a 700-lb bale of hay every day before feeding out the hay. I didn’t recognize the fragments and fruits/pods in a highly compressed state and am very reluctant to add a new plant to my little ecozone without identifying it as desirable first. I’ll have to bring in one of the pieces – I’ve been starting a little pile – and do a real identification, and now I will have somewhere to start. Thank you!

Thank you Quinn. I hope that isn’t horse nettle in the hay because it has some nasty thorns and I don’t think a horse or cow would appreciate them in their feed. Strangely, the thorns grow on the leaves so they can be tough to see, but if the leaves are intact you shouldn’t have any trouble distinguishing them from grass.
Good luck!

From the first day of feeding out this new hay, I was reacting to something stabby/itchy, and thought it might be Rubus – a likely culprit. I now wear leather gloves to tear the bale apart, and since starting that I’ve found an occasional detached tiny thorn *inside* my leather gloves, so it can’t be Rubus. This is meadow hay, so a real variety pack but usually I can figure out the individual species if I have to. This fruity-looking thing is a new one on me, and since the bale is incredibly compressed, I’m finding it as thick stalks with yellow fruits – the leaves get torn off when I pull the stalks out. I’ll have to look more carefully. And if it is horse nettle, I definitely do NOT want to introduce it here. Ugh. Thank you again!

Thanks Montucky! I’ve seen dandelions and a few others but most flowers seem to be in waiting mode.
The new computer is making life a little easier. The old one was about at the end of its run.
I hope everyone went to see your owl photo. It’s the best I’ve seen in a long time!

Apparently, I am learning quite a bit from reading your posts and viewing the gorgeous photos- I knew the type of fungus and recognized golden thread from previous blogs! The link to owl photo much appreciated. The “improved” part of the forest-the rocks look almost in a spiral formation. Could it be a labyrinth for walking meditation or prayer? Thank for brightening my evening with your many skills.

Your owl tree stump is very good. I hope that you come to terms with your new monitor quickly as it is frustrating when things don’t like as they should. The pictures looked fine, though perhaps they are a little brighter than usual. The would be popular picnic spot didn’t look very inviting to me at all.

Thank you for the feedback on the photos. The monitor is hooked to a laptop and though I can dim the laptop monitor I can’t on the external monitor. It is frustrating.
No, apparently that picnic spot doesn’t look inviting to anyone, because I’ve never seen anyone there.

The yellow “flowers” had me fooled at first. Some of our parks and places have been “improved”, I prefer the natural woods and trails, definitely. Our weather has been slow to warm up, and we have the occasional snow covered trail in the woods. We have been hearing Barred Owls and have been seeing many Bald Eagles. There were 5 Bald Eagles perched in a tree right here at home one day! Thanks for the post!

Thanks Chris, I’m sorry to hear that you’ve seen “improvements” too. I wonder if we’ll ever learn to just leave nature alone.
I’m glad you’re seeing owls and eagles, I saw one of each today! You’re lucky they’re so close as well.

That crenelated turkey tail fungus brings to mind the spinning garments of a Dervish, and the elegant beech leaf, a bronze ornament on Royal headwear. But really, natural beauty as you’ve captured requires no human ties at all. Thank you!

I love your owl stump and enjoyed reading of your previous encounter with the the Barred Owl as well as your recent sighting. It’s great to see all your signs of spring, though, of course, you are a bit behind us in Northern Virginia.